New ARL Commissioners Peter Beattie and Megan Davis will have tough time solving NRL woes

THE battered trust between the ARL Commission and at least some of its 16 clubs took fresh new dings on Tuesday with battlelines drawn along state lines again.

Pictured is ARLC Chairman John Grant speaking at the 2016 NRL Season Launch in Sydney today. Pictured: Tim Hunter.

THE battered trust between the ARL Commission and at least some of its 16 clubs took fresh new dings on Tuesday.

Former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie was announced as a Commissioner and the smart money is on Beattie replacing John Grant as Commission chairman next February.

The warring states of the NRL believe the game will do it tougher under Beattie’s appointment, not easier, and immediately the conspiracy theories abound.

But, as they say, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they ain’t after you.

It struck a note with Grant on Tuesday when he toured Penrith’s centre of excellence facilities, a temple purpose-built for the promotion of rugby league.

Grant is 67 and in the last months of his five-year stint as NRL boss, having made millions in the IT industry.

Peter Beattie will join the ARLC.

Not far away was Panthers general manager of football, Phil Gould, 59 and old-school. Gould was changing the way the game was thought about before the industry Grant earned his millions in was even invented.

Of the same generation, they represent different generations.

The Panthers were showing the ARL chairman around their facilities when Grant noticed a sign on the wall.

Respect the past, create the future, it said, and Grant took all of it in.

“At the Commission you’ve got to respect the past but not be hung by it,” he says.

“We’ve got to create our future.”

The clubs have a hard time seeing this.

They have lacked faith in the Commission from almost the beginning and now they are being asked to trust that Beattie, a former Queensland Premier from the Labor Party, and Professor Megan Davis will finally deliver the game its future.

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Professor Davis is a constitutional law expert and spent almost 20 years as a diplomat with the United Nations.

But there are conspiracies afoot.

About six weeks back Roosters boss Nick Politis called for an update on the ARL’s constitutional reform. The deadline had passed and the clubs were waiting to sign it away.

The new powers would give the clubs a say on the appointment of other Commissioners as well as two seats on the board, as well as a seat each for the NSW and Queensland Rugby Leagues.

It was a 6-4 split, with the balance of power retained by the so-called independent Commissioners.

Politis was told the QRL’s lawyer was away and there was a holdup.

This dovetailed entirely into fears a Queensland bloc was hijacking the game. The paperwork has still not been sighted and two new Commissioners, both from Queensland, have been appointed.

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On top, the clubs believe politicians were supposed to be banned from the Commission.

When it was first formed, former Prime Minister John Howard, a Liberal, was proposed as a possible candidate, as was former Labor number cruncher Graham Richardson.

In the end, they decided there was already too many politics in rugby league and to introduce political beliefs into a boardroom already chock full of conflicting opinions on the game’s direction was introducing flame to fuel.

Grant has no knowledge of such a deal and counters by saying Souths chairman Nick Pappas and Brisbane chairman Dennis Watt were included in the latter stages of the recruitment of Beattie and Davis and not once uttered protest.

Grant’s time on the commission is coming to a close.

That does nothing to please the scarred memories of the Sydney-based NRL clubs.

They do not want more businesspeople and academics on the board, bringing theory without the practice.

A truth harshly learned in the game’s troubled five-year period under the Commission, with clubs going broke and being bailed out amid the theory the game needed more businesspeople instead of rugby league people in its boardrooms, is that the true value is the mix. People who know the business of rugby league.

Grant declared it is time to move on.

“Unless people get their collective heads out of their collective backsides this game is never going to achieve the greatness that it should,” Grant said.

It is something both sides agree on. They just believe the other side needs to make the extraction.

As for Professor Davis, though, she might soon be earning her three points in the Dally M’s.

Included in her previous career was a stint as a United Nations peacekeeper.

She will need every bit of that experience.

Originally published as New ARL Commissioners Peter Beattie and Megan Davis will have tough time solving NRL woes